Handshake Software

Handshake is an e-commerce and order management platform for small and midsize manufacturers and distributors. The solution can help users search for new customers, explore new geographies for sales, monitor customer engagements and manage retailers.

Users can upload custom branding such as logos, taglines and images, build product catalogs and create separate catalog pages. Handshake displays real-time stock inventory, and stock availability is updated after every sale or return. A dedicated portal for retailers allows them to see their order history, place new orders, track shipments, make payments and more.

Handshake also allows businesses to create promotional and landing pages that can be shared with retailers via email to promote a specific product and sales campaigns. Handshake integrates with third-party applications such as NetSuite, QuickBooks, Salesforce and MS Dynamics.

The solution is available with a per user per month subscription which includes customer support via phone, web and live chat.

Very Frustrating

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We Started to use Handshake about 3 years ago. At first, their customer and support service was very responsive and we had no major problem for the first 3 months in 2018.

Cons

We are using Handshake for about 3 years. It is an everyday battle. It takes a lot of time from us to navigate the issues and their customer service is not responsive at all. Especially from May 2018, nobody is answering our calls in their support team. And when we email our issues, it takes more than 2 weeks to get resolved. Right now we are experiencing lots of issues from June and many of the critical ones are still unsolved.
Most of the issues are about the Handshake Direct. We have product missing in different customer groups. We have syncing issues & .......

Handshake is a Small Business’s Best Friend

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Handshake really simplifies my order processing experience. Both at trade shows and in the studio, Handshake adds a level of professionalism in the appearance and clarity of the order and shipping-related documents we create. And the customer service team at Handshake is great to work with and very responsive to even our most trivial questions.

Pros

Handshake software is easy to use and makes order-taking and acknowledgement a snap - particularly in busy trade show environments. Product lists are easy to load and update. While I don’t use it yet, I’m excited at the prospect of using the invoicing function as well

Cons

It would be nice to be able to update the product list on my iPad as well as on my laptop

Happy Rep agency

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I have been using Handshake for over 5 years and it’s helped me grow my business from one rep to 10. We sell products for 16 different manufactures and it’s has become my teams sales catalog. Can’t see doing outside sales any other way.

Pros

Simplicity of order entry for my reps in the field and the ease of updating multiple lines.

Cons

It not available for other platforms like android or windows. Price breaks do not add up when a product has multiple variants.

Handshake - Mobile entry

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We are able to enter orders as long as we have internet or cell service. This allows us to quickly enter orders & ship them almost the same day. It has helped us increase our service levels to customers & potential customers.

Pros

The ability to enter orders & see Customer Information via a mobile device. This is/was critical for us since we do one show a month were we get hundreds of future orders. Being able to sign in on 2 devices allows us to maximize out investment.

Cons

The pricing, while robust, is not as robust as our ERP. We have done some work arounds to accommodate this. This issue was not a showstopper for us.

Great for Trade Shows

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I love that it includes images and sends the customer pictures of what they ordered. We have a Christmas-based business and sometimes our customers will buy something in February that they don't want shipped to them until October so being able to remind them with pictures of what they ordered is fabulous.

Cons

Does not track inventory levels. I would love to put my inventory numbers in before a trade show so that I don't oversell beyond what I have in stock.
It would also be great if we could invoice customers. We have a Christmas-based business and sometimes our customers will buy something in February that they don't want shipped to them until October so we often don't collect payment information from them at the time that they order. Then we have to call them before we ship their order to collect credit card information. I would love to be able to email them and invoice them directly from Handshake.

Efficient and Effective

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I have had a very positive experience with Handshake over the last few years, and I would definitely recommend it to other manufacturer sales representatives. It saves me a great amount of time each day.

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Happy Handshaker

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Working with the Handshake team to launch the app and online experience to our teams and customers was nearly flawless. Some programs can cause "pain and suffering" but I've never been frustrated with using the system. I think that's partly because the Handshake onboarding team taught me so well but also because the software is so easy to use.

Pros

Handshake has brought efficiencies to our sales and fulfillment process. We've also been able to use it to take our inventory, saving us hundreds of hours of manual work. Our branches are able to fulfill orders faster which makes our customers happier too! HSDO has helped our customers order more product from us and opened up time to have more meaningful conversations with our reps too.

Cons

This is quite minor but I wish there was a bit more I could do for our online, customer facing portal. But really, that's just a cherry on top.

Handshake is what you need for POS

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Extremely easy to use and effective software, outstanding responsive support. Highly recommend company and product.

Pros

Handshake makes inventory management, POS, product upload a breeze. Beyond, handling our POS, we often turn to handshake just to quickly access skus and product images as reference because of its ease of use. It also serves as our primary source for CSV organized exchange of product and price information. Highly recommended.

Cons

Would like to see it on Android as well as iOS.

Review Source: Capterra

November 2018

November 2018

Handshake is Great for what I need

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The customer service has been awesome, everything we've needed to support our order processing has been addressed and worked on. I look forward to continuing to work with Handshake moving forward!

Cons

It is not intuitive to change and update order data. It isn't difficult, just hard to figure out if you're not familiar with it.

Great Tool for Start-ups

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Overall, I think Handshake is a great tool for companies without an existing order/inventory system. While it was a nice-to-have for us at shows, it was the only time we used it and could no longer warrant the expense to keep it.

Pros

We are a larger company that added Handshake to assist us at gift tradeshows where we do not have traditional showroom representation. The software helped us to upload our customer and product list so we could write orders in real time during the tradeshows and send order copies to our customers immediately.

Cons

At times, it was not efficient enough to set up a new customer in the moment. We often would physically write the order, then transfer it into the software as time at the show would permit.